Community Spotlight

Good Health Includes A Healthy Community

At Hill Country, we believe that good health includes a healthy community. To that end, we provide activities and classes that enrich the lives of our community members, as well as support other organizations that complement our mission.

Project S.A.V.E.

Hill Country Health and Wellness Center is a proud donor to the Chico, California chapter of the charitable organization Project S.A.V.E. (Salvage All Valuable Equipment). This organization recycles medical and dental equipment, in addition to supplies received from professional organizations, clinics, hospitals, and individuals, which are then shipped to hospitals and clinics in need around the world. The staff are all unpaid volunteers, and shipping costs are paid with tax deductible donations. Since July 2004, Project S.A.V.E. has delivered 70 twenty-foot containers to 39 countries around the world, packed full of much needed supplies.

Please visit their website for more information. Below is a story recently published in Project S.A.V.E.’s newsletter, written by Chico Project S.A.V.E.’s Volunteer Director, Janice Walker:

Surgery on medical mission trips is always a challenge, especially in rural areas of the Philippines. Surgeons consider it a luxury to have the right instruments, proper equipment and the correct size sutures. Sterile towels and gowns are a bonus. Startling as it is, washing “paper” gowns and rubber globes for reuse later in common in many foreign countries.

One day at the clinic in Tboli, Phillipines, I was enjoying a moment of quiet; contemplating all the activity around me … Everywhere I went our supplies were present. Simple things like used hospital beds from Project S.A.V.E. that meant patients no longer had to sleep on cardboard & grass mats on a concrete floor. I was rejoicing…until suddenly, the small fan cooling me went out!

The compound was silent for a moment as the doctors in the nearby O.R. realized they were now operating without power. Then suddenly, one voice rang out! It was Dr. Glenn Geelhoed leading a choir of nurses and doctors in the little song many of us learned in Sunday school, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.” Flipping on their biker style headlights, without suction, no cauteries to control bleeding and of course, no air-conditioning, the four surgeons continued on while songs filled the air.

Recently, Project S.A.V.E. was blessed with the donation of a small battery-operated lantern. Knowing Dr. Allan Melicor, a surgeon from the Philippines was soon to arrive, I [hung the little lantern on the guest room door to welcome him. His smiling response was, “Wow, we can really use this!” This little light will shine when the power goes out in Tboli and other mission hospitals he visits. Little things mean so very much!

Art At Hill Country

At Hill Country Health and Wellness Center, we believe that beauty and inspiration are an important part of what makes a community happy and healthy. Hill Country exhibits art from local and state artists in our dental and behavioral health lobby, our great room, and the hallway between our medical and dental lobbies. Exhibits change three times a year.

Current Exhibit

Celeste White

HILL COUNTRY HEALTH AND WELLNESS CENTER

This health center receives HHS funding and has Federal Public Health Service (PHS) deemed status with respect to certain health or health-related claims, including medical malpractice claims, for itself and its covered individuals.